Exciting
three-year-old Zip Zip Aray is the latest contender for South Australia’s highest
honour in thoroughbred racing after he scored a comprehensive win in the Group One Honda
Goodwood Handicap at Morphettville during the recent Adelaide Cup Carnival.
Zip Zip Aray (Bellotto-Eastern Charm) is
now one of five South Australian bred performers in the running to be crowned as the South
Australian Horse of the Year for 2002.
Trained on the track by David Jolly, a
member of one of Adelaide’s present day leading racing families, the son of Bellotto
proved too classy for a top class field in South Australia’s premier sprinting race.
Bred and raced by well known hoteliers and
owners Wayne and Jenny Francis and their brother-in-law Ray Borda, Zip Zip Aray followed
up his strong third in the Yallambee Classic (G2) with his Goodwood triumph.
The win was a great boost for the proven
stallion Bellotto, who stands at Peter and Pauline Liston’s Lakewood Stud at
Wellington.
Bellotto, a stakes placed son of the
champion sire of sires Mr Prospector, is one of Australia’s most popular and proven
sires. His top performers on the track have included Bullwinkle, Bellzevir, MY Brightia,
Clang, Count Cambridge, Seto Bridge, Yammer, Reputed Groom and Fraud.
Zip Zip Aray is out of the King’s High
mare Eastern Charm. Her Goodwood hero is her only runner to date. The mare’s first
foal, by Military Plume, is unraced. Unfortunately Eastern Charm missed to SA stallion
Gallo di Ferro during the 1999 breeding season.
There is much excitement in the Francis and
Borda families with two new additions to the family. Eastern Charm’s rising
two-year-old is a filly by the former Lakewood shuttler Danzig Connection and her present
day weanling is another filly, by the beautifully bred Monolith. As if scripted for a
fairytale the mare is now in foal to Bellotto, thus the resultant foal will be a full
relation to the Group One winner.
Zip Zip Aray’s young trainer David
Jolly always felt his youngster was a potential star of the future.
"From the first day I galloped him, I
knew he would make a very good horse," winning trainer David Jolly said. "He
just has so much ability – he does things too easily."
"He is still very green and I think he
can continue to improve. I told the owners a couple of months ago I was going to aim him
at some of the good sprints over the carnival, but to actually pull off the Goodwood is
just amazing," Jolly said after the win.
Meanwhile, the South Australian
Thoroughbred Breeders have also announced that the Made of Gold filly Cosmic Strike (ex
National Star) has been honoured as being the Horse of the Month for January.
Although her win in the SABIS
Three-Year-Old Handicap during January was not a stakes race it was a precursor to
impressive wins in both the KPMG Stakes and Malaysia Airlines Stakes, both at listed
level.
There are now five locally bred gallopers
in the running to be crowned the South Australian Horse of the Year for 2002. The monthly
finalists to date are Cosmic Strike (January), Regal Kiss (February), Toledo (March),
Berezny (April) and Zip Zip Aray (May). |
